Chapter Text
Earlier:
“N-Type and A-Type,” Izuku said to Raia, standing inside his castle after Brandon had left. “What’s the difference?”
“Vestiges are the Manifestation of your Soul’s deepest reflection.”
“My N-Type was a Shadow World. It was kind of… edgy for someone like me.”
“Null represents chaos, emotions, desire. It’s not something you’re inherently aware of. It’s very much… human.”
“Like the doors on Bael’s Forge,” Izuku noted.
Raia nodded. “Absolute is order. It’s sterile and it’s very surface-level. N-Type is a Manifestation you didn’t even know you had. A-Type is up to you. It’s your creation. Your Soul is A-Type Particles. It harnesses N-Type Particles. So, N-Type is made by the universe, A-Type is what you make with the particles of your own Soul.”
“Then why is my N-Type so dark? Is it just because I’m the Shadow Monarch?”
“I can’t give you a definitive answer,” Raia replied. “But I think… You’ve tried so hard to be a good person. I once believed you were too kind, too moral for this power. Somewhere in there, whether you know it or not, you hold more darkness than you know.”
*******
Present:
“A-Type: Manifest Destiny.”
The sky darkened, and the stars came out in full force. It was the most brilliant display of the cosmos Izuku had ever seen.
*******
[Manifest Destiny:]
- ABSOLUTE-Type Vestige Manifestation.
- Cost: Reduces Mana down to 1% of its max value.
- Description: The User’s physical body is stretched into a starry night sky. Each of the stars shine a laser at a certain angle. These lasers count as contact with the target, allowing the User to activate the Quirk - New Order. Boosts the power of every Order.
*******
“So it is a Quirk…”
“Izuku Midoriya’s Soul is destroyed!” Cathleen’s voice echoed around him.
One of Izuku’s buffer Souls, contained within One For All, was mangled and vanished. It would regenerate eventually, but it showed she could get her hits in.
“What?! Why didn’t that- You have multiple Souls!”
“Izuku Midoriya loses all of his Souls!” Nothing happened, not even the One For All Souls. That was because…
“Lasers are light, and gravity can have an effect on light,” He answered, using his Apex Skill to create an intense field where none of the lasers would intersect with him. “It was a neat trick. Usually, only Gods can utilize Vestiges, but I guess your Primordial DNA gave you the capacity.”
“Why?! Why won’t you die?! Maybe I’ll just keep you here forever! So humanity can move on!”
Izuku shrugged. “I can activate my own Vestige and cancel this out at any time. Or teleport for that instance. This Vestige isn’t strong enough to hold me. The real question isn’t why you can’t kill me, it’s why you want me dead so badly. You’re conscious, something most victims of… ya know what, let’s call it Space Madness- no Cosmic Madness. I don’t want to use the exact phrase Project Gray used and it’s much easier to say than Yog-Sothoth. Cosmic Madness is when a human brain cannot handle the truth of the universe, or the multiverse as it were. It’s a biological response only a handful have. Some people can handle it. It implies a psychological state. So tell me, why do you want to kill me?”
“You think you can trick me?!”
“Well, it seems like I can’t hurt you in this state and you can’t hurt me, it’s the perfect time to talk.” Izuku shouted to the strange void that Star had become. He could’ve done any number of things, including a Vestige, but he didn’t want to risk it just yet. It spent almost all of his Mana, after all. “Think of it logically. You know about Project Gray and you know that Cosmic Madness is a real thing. So, why kill me? Surely your fears stem more from the horrors of the multiverse?”
“You’re part of it, NULL.”
Izuku sighed. “Yes. It appears that I have been chosen as some… part of NULL. A vessel or avatar. I don’t know. I know the way this world… universe, works. But that doesn’t mean I know everything.”
“NULL is chaos. It’s the Monarchs, it’s destruction!”
“Ah…” Izuku laughed. “You’re afraid of a lack of control, that’s where it all stems from.”
“...”
“As a National-Rank, with a hotline to the President of the United States, you probably felt like you had control of everything. Or at least enough to not feel left out. That’s why you see me as a threat. Someone stronger.”
“An agent of chaos!”
Izuku struggled to not roll his eyes. It was so cliche. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’ve been trying to limit the chaos! Jonas, for instance?”
“Sure. You’re gaining my trust for some plan.”
“And what plan is that? Just because I want to unite humanity under one banner doesn’t mean I’m some… dictator or genocidal maniac.”
“No, it’s much deeper than that. I saw it when I touched Yggdrasil to activate an order.” Izuku felt Star trying to probe him with the lasers as she spoke, missing every single time. “Our existence, our reality, is threatened from a place we cannot reach, something that NULL and ABSOLUTE are behind. So anything close to them cannot be trusted. The Monarchs and Rulers…” She scoffed. “They’re just a symptom of the larger illness.”
“Okay… fine… I’ll tell you what it all is.” Izuku sighed. “I doubt this’ll make you any more sane, but it can’t be helped.”
“A-Type: Pillar of Reality.”
Suddenly, Cathleen’s Vestige was wiped away, like a canvas being washed of any paint.
Izuku and Cathleen stood in a white space, with a towering pillar of light behind them. It was made of countless strings of light.
“What… what is this?” Cathleen looked at her hands, surprised to see she was back to her physical form.
“My Soul,” He answered. “My N-Type is a world of Shadows, for physical and magical battles in the real world. My A-Type is-”
“N-Type?”
“Oh… you can’t do one of those? Nevermind, it’s not important.” He brushed away her concerns. “In this world, we are completely equal. Our powers are wiped away, and we stand on equal footing. I made it to combat things stronger than I am.”
“But, if you’re the same strength, then wouldn’t they-”
Izuku practically giggled with mirth. It was a clear sound that rang throughout the eternity he created. “If our strength becomes equal, then it is only a test of willpower. Who can get hit and keep getting up? If it comes down to that… I will never lose.”
“Is that why you pulled me in here? To kill me?”
Izuku shook his head. “I pulled you in here, because it’s not just equal strength. It’s understanding. My Soul laid bare for others to see and learn. I created this Vestige not only to handle stronger opponents, but to handle minds far different from my own. To reach an understanding, in the hopes that beating each other senseless is not necessary.”
“Then, what have you brought me here to see?”
Izuku took a deep breath, still processing it himself. “In another world, above ours, is one we cannot reach as you put it. It is a universe very much like our own, where Earth came to host a series of powers called Quirks.”
Images flashed around Izuku, a world without Rulers or Monarchs, without Gods and monsters, and without NULL or ABSOLUTE. “In this universe, there is another Izuku Midoriya. A boy who was born without a Quirk, who wanted to be a Hero, and to save lives. But in this world, a Hero needs a Quirk, a power. Something he doesn’t have. And then.” The images changed to show a suburban alley in Japan, where sakura petals fluttered down around a young boy with green hair and a frail man with blonde hair.
“Young man, you too can become a Hero!”
Izuku felt tears welling up subconsciously. In this space, everything you felt was made true. He couldn’t hide the emotions such a scene drew from his heart. “This boy would go on to accept One For All, a Quirk that worked for the good of humanity.” The entirety of Izuku Midoriya’s life played out, up to the final moments of his Quirk.
He stood across from a man with white hair and cracked skin. “Tenko Shimura, or Tomura Shigaraki. In a final desperate plea to save his nemesis, Izuku Midoriya transferred One For All to this Villain.” Tomura was then shown dissolving and the ‘video’ slowed as it reached his upper half. “The Quirks were in the process of destroying each other, and ending the threat to their world.”
Cathleen’s eyes grew wide. “NULL and ABSOLUTE…”
“Neither Quirk is NULL, and both are NULL. They are both ABSOLUTE and yet, neither are ABSOLUTE.” He waved away the images. “The two Quirks had endless potential, endless energy. They were eggs, and each one held a universe of possibility. When they were set free from their human hosts, they merged, and what was one universe each became… a multiverse.”
“So… I was right? We’re not real? We’re just the dying essence of two… superpowers?”
Izuku smiled. “I don’t think so. I think… we’re reflections. The two Quirks are destroying themselves, right now, as we speak. But time works differently here. Our years are attoseconds in that other universe. Our universe might be threatened by the two. Who knows what will happen when they fully merge, or maybe they’ll destroy each other? But we are real.”
“How? How could we possibly ever be real if that’s where we come from?!”
“What created that universe then? What created the one above it?” His questions grabbed her attention. Her crazed gaze. The images revealed a chain of universes, never ending, never beginning. “We are as real as we choose to be.”
Cathleen grabbed her head, falling to her knees. “What is all of this?! Just a hell to toy with us?!”
“We’re a reflection, like I said.” The images changed to show several different Izukus. A hybrid human-dragon. A man encased in metal armor who could run faster than the speed of sound. An autonomous sentience, seeking answers and the penance of humanity. A young slave piloting a mech. Dozens more crossed Star’s vision, showing her endless possibilities.
“Reflections of their world. Some are similar, some are impossibly different, and some that make no sense at all. I believe that, in many ways, I am Izuku Midoriya’s desire to hold onto his power. I am his potential for endless growth, given away for the sake of others.” He sat on the ‘ground’ of the Soulscape, across from Cathleen. “That is Cosmic Madness. Understanding that we might not… matter…” He laughed bitterly. “Do you know how much I’ve been through? How much we’ve all been through? That’s why some people fall to the Madness and others don’t? It’s because those who are immune have reconciled with their own importance.”
“How does a reflection matter?” She asked quietly. Her madness vanished, replaced by an impossible void of loneliness.
“You just asked the same question Izuku Midoriya once asked himself,” He replied, showing the Izuku Midoriya above comparing himself to All Might. “And if he knew the truth about his universe, where it came from, he’d ask the same question… because it's the question everyone asks. What is my purpose?” He gestured broadly at his own Soulscape. “Is this real? Or is our physical world the real one? Simulations, Gods, happenstance. That is how our endless cycle of universes exist. None of them are more ‘real’ than the last, and yet they continue.”
“I think… therefore I am?” She whispered.
“Exactly. Maybe one day, we’ll create our own set of universes that spiral out into the chain of reality.”
“But if it could all end? The Quirks merging?”
Izuku shrugged. “It won’t happen for at least another three hundred and twenty-six thousand years. A… friend of mine, did the math.” He corrected, almost saying the Synthetic Lord’s name. “What happens at the end of those years is not for us to say. The most likely conclusion?” She looked up with tear-stricken eyes. “We continue to exist, our own link in the chain. It’s really not much different from our current reality. One day, a few more billion years I grant you, the sun will consume the Earth in a fiery haze. And in a couple decades, without interference, the climate will eradicate most life on the planet. We’ve always been on the brink of destruction.”
“So, what are we doing… here?”
“Well… that’s for us to decide. Our… original, if that’s what you want to call him,” Izuku said, gesturing to an image of the Izuku in the universe above theirs, “believes that his purpose is to save lives.”
“And in the grand scheme of things, it won’t matter,” Star protested.
“Yet he did it with a smile. And I’ll continue to do so as well, no matter what I know.”
“How…?” She asked again.
“I told you, I don’t have all the answers. I just know… this is a world worth fighting for. As fleeting as it may or may not be, I’m not going to let the Monarchs destroy it. They think we have no free will because the Absolute Being and his sister knew all of this.” He spread his hands to encompass everything he’d told her. “They couldn’t handle that truth, that we may not matter, that we may not be real, or have free will. They want to destroy this universe so that they can build their own, without NULL and ABSOLUTE. As for me, I don’t care. I just hope that, one day, I can meet my own reflection and tell him that his sacrifice was worth it. He spawned countless lives, countless universes, even if he didn’t mean to.”
The Vestige faded away, and the two found themselves sitting cross-legged on a mountain top, somewhere in Montana. Star was no longer in a fury of madness, she merely looked sad. Izuku grabbed some snow and poured it over Star’s head.
“Gah! What-” She stopped short as she spotted Izuku’s smirk.
“Feels pretty real, huh?”
She stared off into the horizon, watching the sun rise. “Yeah, it did… It’s uhm… a lot to process.”
“I know. I haven't even told my wives yet. Still debating that. There definitely are some things we aren’t mean to know.” He looked up and saw Igris standing next to him, a hand on his Liege’s shoulder. “But, if it’s any consolation, my Shadows know there is something after death. Something beyond even the Shadow Monarch. There’s more to this… reality than we know.” He slapped his knees and stood. “Come on, we have work to do.”
“Wha…? That’s it? I start a war and try to-”
“I was prepared to kill you, didn’t mean I wanted to. As for the war, that’s exactly what you’re going to fix.”
*******
“I’m sorry what?! It’s been five days?!” Izuku was dragged to his home in Japan by Momo’s phone call.
Yaoyorozu gave him a hug of relief. “We couldn’t reach you. Kamish, Phantom, Beru, Igris, The Lesser World and Orobours. None of them could get to you.”
“Okay… okay, bring me up to speed…” He took note of President Andrew in his living room, just as everyone else took note of Star.
“She’s sane. A whole can of worms there. I don’t see her as a threat. But him?”
“My job,” Thomas Andre said, joining the party. “When it became clear America was… fracturing, I took him here, the only place I knew he’d be safe. I would’ve asked but-” He didn’t seem too broken up about crashing in Izuku’s home with the President.
“It was the right call,” Izuku said, ending that discussion. “Her Vestige,” he said pointing to Star, “My Vestige and my Gravity Magic… we must’ve dilated time for ourselves between those three. So, what happened while we were gone?”
Kaina still looked ready to shoot Star, but held her tongue. “Well, about 12 hours after you guys vanished, the United States was in complete turmoil. It’s not even clear what sides there are. California, Texas, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona formed their own little contingent. They’re probably the most organized outside of the North-East Coalition. Pretty much any state close to D.C.”
“But practically every state is in urban warfare.” Andrew butted in. “Even the North-East and the South-West alliances. States are more divided than they’d like to admit. Total chaos. I made an address from Area 51, declaring Star a criminal and explaining her ‘influence’ over the North-East States. Moments later, we were being bombed by our newest stealth plane.”
“Which is when Andre requested we shelter the President,” Phantom added. “Due to Japan’s favorable relations with the United States, and our relative peace, we accepted. I made the decision, my Liege. Should there be any burden for that decision, I will accept them fully.”
Izuku shook his head alongside Momo. “No, you made the right call. No one would risk coming here to get him. I appreciate the initiative, in fact.” He turned his attention back to the President. “You seriously couldn’t get them to listen?”
“I made so many calls…” He said, his shoulders slumped. Rumi, standing behind him, nodded to Izuku. He was telling the truth. “Generals, politicians, entire divisions of the American forces…” Andrew looked up to Star with broken eyes. “General Abernacky… How did you destroy us so…” He couldn’t finish the sentence.
“I… I admit I used Orders to mind control or brainwash several high-ranking members. But I didn’t think I did enough to completely eliminate your own influence,” She responded. She seemed confused. “Am I missing time? I don’t understand… General Abernacky, are you saying I turned him?”
Andrew scoffed. “I knew his family, I thought… but no, he just wouldn’t listen…”
Cathleen looked at Izuku. “I… don’t remember that. But I remember everything else. I was fully conscious, just… under false beliefs.”
“I think I believe her.” He saw his family staring at him. “I’ll explain everything later, I swear.”
“So you think that something else is at work here?”
“Possibly, we never did figure out what those Anti-Heroes on Europa were up to…” Izuku shook his head. “Please continue.”
“As soon as it was clear that America was… occupied, China made its move. Taiwan is currently repelling an invasion force.”
“That was when the Shadows intervened,” Igris answered. “I took command of our army, and with support from our Empress, started to allocate forces around the world.”
“Taiwan and China are in a stalemate thanks to their own military might and some Rogue Warriors and F-52s for air support,” Momo reported.
“Shortly after that, India and Pakistan’s relations broke. They’d been remarkably amicable up until recently. Pressure from the Gates and the geopolitics…” Andrew shook his head. “Brazil’s own Civil War continued in earnest, with Jonas back to his old tricks. Argentina and Chile formed a defensive pact. Turkey started moving into the Middle-East. Ever since Russia became neutered by the Shadow Monarch, they’ve had much more ‘freedom.’”
Izuku clicked his tongue at that. “Is Russia still… ya know?”
Setsuna nodded. “Don’t worry, I talked to Yuri, with a translator of course. Russia’s still half infested with Chaotics, like Australia, and recovering from the Second Russo-Japanese war. Even the most hardcore Generals over there want time to rebuild their forces before they do anything stupid. Yuri’s got everyone on a pretty tight leash after Quaresha anyways.”
“That’s what probably got to America…” Izuku realized. “To some of these countries. Maybe working through humans, maybe not. But we can assume some Higher Beings are involved with these wars. How’s Europe, Africa, and the Norwegian countries?”
“The Norwegian countries are currently neutral, nothing going on there.” Kaina responded, working her way backwards through the question. “Africa is a little more complicated. We think Egypt and Nigeria formed a secret alliance. They want to conquer Africa from different sides and meet up with their combined forces to then handle the rest of the continent. But Africa is broken up into so many nations and regions it’s hard to decipher what’s going on there right now. There might be additional players in their hidden pact that we don’t know about. The Shadows are mostly busy keeping civilians safe to worry about espionage.”
Izuku nodded. Even with the influx of Rogue Warriors, they were spread dangerously thin. One Rogue Warrior was capable of handling anything humanity could currently throw at them, even a thermonuclear device. However, that didn’t mean they could take and hold massive amounts of territory. A war still dealt with massive front lines stretching kilometers across. For humanity, that took hundreds of thousands of men. The Shadows had an overwhelming quality, but not yet quantity, when compared to humanity’s overpopulation. Especially in cases like India or China.
“As for Europe…” Everyone in the room exchanged troubled glances. The first two World Wars encompassed, well… the world, but both started in Europe.
“France, Germany, Poland and a bunch of post-Soviet states like Ukraine and Belarus, allied against the UK, Spain, and Portugal.”
“That’s… kind of a bizarre matchup, what happened?” Izuku asked.
“The UK’s been getting handsy about their Empire. Spain and Portugal were once Colony Empires as well.”
“So is France,” Izuku pointed out.
“Geography played a role, but the textured history between France and Germany changed things. They formed out of a desire to protect from colonizers and bigger nations like Russia. This mostly happened due to NATO’s collapse. It’s just… everyone for themselves really.”
Izuku nodded. “Okay, and what’s going on with Japan and the Koreas? Anything?”
“Shockingly, North Korea hasn’t made a move,” Momo reported. “We think they lost their nerve as soon as they realized the scope of these wars. Which means South Korea and Japan remain neutral as well, outside of some assistance to Taiwan. Most of East-Asia also de-escalated. We think it’s the same reason as North Korea. They got scared.”
“Scared is better than warring, I guess. So where are our forces?”
“America, Taiwan, the Middle-East, and Brazil,” Deep Blue reported, serving just below Igris. “We don’t have enough of a foothold in other nations, nor enough intel, to get involved in those conflicts just yet.”
“All this in five days?” Izuku asked, incredulous. “When World War 2 broke out it took months or years to get other nations involved!” He looked to Andrew for answers this time.
“Tensions have been running high ever since the Gates. 30 years is a long time for most countries. We would’ve devolved into war years ago had it not been for the existential threat. It kept us all from doing something we’d regret.”
“And now they’ve all been pushed over the edge…” Izuku sighed.
“So uhm… why can’t we just ‘dispose’ of the bad actors, like with Russia?” Rumi asked, raising her hand like a child in class.
“It’s not that simple,” Half of the room said in tandem.
“Why not?”
“Because, unlike the war with Russia, it’s not so clear cut,” Kei answered. “With Russia, it was us against them, and we didn’t even know a Monarch was involved… or what a Monarch was at the time.”
“She’s right,” Andre added. “There’s almost never ‘good guys’ in war. Had the Second Russo-Japanese war lasted longer, I assure you, Japan would’ve added a few more war crimes to its list. All nations do eventually. So how do you pick?”
“What about removing both sides?”
“Then you just throw all the nations into chaos,” Andrew answered. “In a long war, it is possible to get the soldiers and civilians to revolt en masse. But at the very beginning? In a war that’s been justified to the people over a long time? No way.”
“And that’s when we come in, right?” Deep Blue asked, sounding remarkably unsure of himself. “With our technology to save them?”
Izuku winced and Igris caught it. “That’s not who he wants to be. A usurper.”
“Killing them… may not be the worst thing to do. It’s better to end wars by killing the old men who start them than the young men and women who actually fight them,” Izuku admitted, locking eyes with Setsuna, reminding her of their time in the E-Rank Gate, where they found Behemoth. “But…”
Even Andrew and Andre looked unsure. The Shadows were the ultimate operatives. They could kill whoever they wanted. They could leave Izuku and everyone else out of it, sparing their conscious. But was that the right way to handle things?
If people chose Izuku’s rule because he was the last one standing… that wasn’t really much of a choice. As much as Andrew was a politician, he was also a firm believer in what America stood for. Even if they stood for it in name and writing only.
“Ooookay…” Rumi chuckled nervously. “We can all stand around looking at each other, or we can do something. We… are going to do something, right?”
“Yes, I just don’t know what.”
“Well, my Liege, he may not be the most… apt ruler, but I believe Andrew had the right idea to start with,” Igris responded.
Izuku’s frown turned to a small smile. A nervous one. “Okay… set it up. I guess it’s my first real address to the world.”
*******
“Is I-Island fine? Everyone made it off safely?” Izuku asked as he dressed himself for regal combat. As Ashborn would do.
“Yeah, Class 1-A, your family, anyone visiting, they’re all safe,” Momo said. “So… what did you tell Star? You pretty much cured her-”
“Cosmic Madness, that’s the name we’ll stick with for now.”
“Right… How?”
Izuku tilted his head back and forth. “It’s… not something I can explain in one sitting. Something Raia told me about.”
“The thing you left out?” She asked.
“Huh?”
Momo rolled her eyes. “Last time you talked to Raia, in that Soul Pathway. When you were bringing me up to speed, I could tell you left something out. And I know… that you wouldn’t leave it out unless it really scared you.”
Izuku chuckled. “Should’ve just come clean from the start. You know what the Reality Hierarchy Theory is?”
Momo’s eyes narrowed as she thought, then became the size of dinner plates. “The Matryoshka Simulation Hypothesis?” She gasped out. “Wait, Raia told you that was real?”
“He showed me a lot. My alternate selves, my ‘original’ self.”
“Wow…” She stood there blinking at him for a few seconds. Then she took a deep breath. “Turtles all the way down. Okay, wow,” She repeated. “Why… Why did he show you that at all?”
“I think he needed to share it with someone, otherwise he’d go crazy,” Izuku said with a small laugh. “But… I think it was his way of showing approval. Across many dimensions, I kept that drive to do right. To save people. And he no longer seemed to think it was foolish, even though…”
“If there are infinite universes, and an infinite chain of existence, then saving people kinda loses its meaning?”
“Yeah,” Izuku smiled. “I knew you’d understand. Just didn’t know how to say that.”
“Well, as someone you once saved,” She sobered up from the revelation quickly, looking right into Izuku’s Soul with all the care in her heart. “It’s never meaningless. So… go make your address to the world.”
“Jeez… never a dull moment?”
Momo shook her head and laughed. “Never!”
She made a final few adjustments to his outfit.
“My Liege,” Deep Blue said, approaching the couple. “We have the authorization of the Japanese government, and we have communications open to every country. I’m translating live, so don’t worry about making things simple for these… tiny human brains, I can handle it.”
“Thank you Deep Blue. I assume you overheard. All of the Shadows did, after all.” Shadows were immune to the effects of Cosmic Madness, and not because they had protection from debuffs or their endless regeneration. It was something they had picked up in Death. Something that gave them a clear mind. It was part of the reason they were devoted to Izuku, genuinely. In Death, they had been freed from the mystery of mortality. No one could understand it, or explain it. You only knew it once you passed beyond the physical world.
“I have. I find it a rather… perfect answer, shockingly,” He responded, sounding curious. “I believe it was the answer I was looking for, when I was Ava, not Deep Blue. Beginnings and endings are… fluid. I like that. Ours to lose…”
“And ours to win,” Izuku finished.
“Indeed. A chain of reality forming an infinite existence. Not just a multiverse, but endless creation. Why that sounds… perfect.” He nodded to his two masters, his curiosity sated, but his purpose was only just beginning. “Thirty seconds, my Liege.”
Izuku took his place at the podium, with a camera aimed at him. The room was empty to still his nerves. Even Momo left. Only the Shadows accompanied him, as they always did. He practiced the words in his mind until the light on the camera turned green.
“My name is Izuku Midoriya. You may know me as the Shadow Monarch.” He paused, not for dramatic effect, but because he had to untangle the words on the tip of his tongue. Of course, it sounded rather poignant to let that fact rest with the world. “I’m speaking to you… to humanity… all of you…” He let a light smile form as he realized just how far and wide that smile would go. “We once again find ourselves in the midst of an interconnected war that has pulled countless lives back into the suffering which our ancestors fought so hard to eliminate. Unfortunately, I cannot offer a simple solution. We’re not simple creatures, after all,” He said, thinking of Deep Blue.
“My Shadows are already out there, disabling weapons of war, shielding whoever they can. But I am not enough on my own… I never have been. As much as I’ve tried to avoid being the one dragged across the finish line, I can only do it by myself on occasion. In reality, it’s better to cross that line holding each other up.” This time he did pause to let thoughts sit. “I’m sure to some, that sounds like Communism or Socialism, and those words have a very specific response to those who hear them. Sooner or later,” he countered that point, “with the way this world is going, we’re all gonna need a shoulder to prop us up across the finish line. I send this message out to the world, as a Monarch of Humanity, of Mortality. I’m sorry, but we are on the brink of destruction. All of us. Strong or weak. A-Rank… or E-Rank. It doesn’t matter what we have as individuals if everything else is taken away. The Gates… they were once thought to be our great filter. If we passed the test, we were to stand for eternity, as a golden species. Yet here we stand, bickering, fighting, wasting resources on wars with each other. All of them are meaningless endpoints. To the victors of this world war go the spoils, a planet already on its way to annihilation. Even the winners lose. Which is why I must seek drastic measures.”
Izuku braced himself on the podium, barely able to comprehend what he was about to say. “My name is Izuku Midoriya,” He repeated. “I was once an E-Rank with little to no money. Now I stand as humanity’s strongest. One of humanity’s richest. I cannot claim answer to all of our world’s problems, and I cannot claim to be perfect myself. We hold our idols to such heights that we forget they are human. We are not a perfect species.” He smirked. “In fact, we’re quite broken… So I say this, I will put us all back together, if you just let me. Not perfect, not without cracks and flaws, but whole. To those who seek war, I am the Shadow Monarch, and I lay claim to humanity’s future. Not as a conqueror, or a dictator… just a guide. I will oppose anyone, any nation, large or small, weak or powerful, who seeks chaos for the sake of their own gain. Race, ethnicity, gender, political ideology. I don’t care who or what you are, I seek our unification, as a species. Regardless of your acceptance, or not, I will stand as humanity’s guardian. And you will find me in the streets, or on a hilltop, perhaps in the skies above. But I will be there to protect those who see the same potential I do. It will not be a short walk. It will be a marathon. Don’t worry,” He assured the camera, “I’ll prove myself, and unlike the leaders of today, I won’t do so via bloodshed.”
He signaled mentally to Deep Blue and the camera stopped transmitting. Izuku wiped the sweat from his brow. “That sucked!”
“It was quite noble,” Igris responded. “But I understand what you mean.”
Izuku walked out into one of the private rooms used by Japan’s strongest. The Japanese Hero Agency was the only place they had set up for such press releases.
Inside was everyone relevant to the current situation. Andre, the president, his wives, and the Japanese Prime Minister.
Setsuna and Rumi gave him thumbs up, but Momo and Kaina looked more concerned.
“No, you did great,” Kaina answered before Izuku could open his mouth. “But… people will definitely see it as a dictator.”
“She’s right,” The Prime Minister added. “If we’re being quite frank here, no politician ever gets elected for such an… optimistic view.”
“You mean naive?”
The Prime Minister spread his hands in surrender. “I support what you said, I really do, and on some level, I even believe in it.”
“But no way anyone in America will go for it,” Andrew reinforced. “Plenty of Americans have ideologized civil war, or coups. But, a Japanese man doing it? They’d fight that to the ends of the Earth.”
Izuku nodded. “I get it. But the Left will see the good I can do, and the Right… well, they just want to live under a good economy. Unlike most U.S. Presidents, I might be able to make that happen.”
Andrew raised an eyebrow. “Good luck, buddy.”
“Deep Blue?” Momo called.
“My Lady, the task is done.” He handed over a single silver spider. “The completed Particle Weavers. Weavers for short.”
“Okay…” Andrew leaned forwards on his knees. “I get that there are enough resources on Earth to satiate everyone, but you can’t just have people throw away individualistic tendencies like that. No matter how good you make their infrastructure, their technology-”
“If anything, it encourages greed,” The Japanese Prime Minister pointed out.
“Which is why I’m gonna feed humanity more than they know what to do with,” Izuku responded. He pointed to the screen in the room and after a minute or two, it flashed to life. It was the surface of the moon. “Maybe it’s not exactly wise to encourage humanity to pilfer other celestial bodies for resources, but for now, we have to focus on surviving the Higher Beings.” He’d already explained the Monarchs and Rulers to them. “We can advise future humans about the preservation of other planets and moons. But let me ask you, what do we have on Earth in terms of population?”
Andrew shrugged. “Eight billion? Slightly more? Gates kinda curtailed our population crisis, but I don’t see-”
“I’m going to procure enough resources for 300 billion humans. And that’s just the first step.”
“How…?”
The moon flashed to life, the same process that took place with the Weavers on the Artemis base happened again. Only this time, their purpose was not to expand the lunar outpost. They were building launch platforms, railguns that would fire anything out of the moon’s weak gravitational pull. Beneath the surface, nuclear reactors were being built for an initial energy jumpstart on the process.
“Solar panels.” Both of the national leaders looked at Izuku curiously. “Humanity has an energy crisis. We’re gonna start with a Dyson Swarm. Millions of solar panels orbiting the sun, beaming their energy wherever in the solar system we need them.”
Andrew’s mouth hung open. “Okay… okay this might actually work… holy shit…”
“I’m going to build farms. Autonomous farms that will produce all the food we need. Mines that give us everything we could ask for. And as soon as we’re sure they’re safe on Earth, we’re going to rebuild every war torn nation. As well as any nation needing it.”
“So… how long? How long do you need?”
“A couple of weeks to set up the Dyson Swarm? These things work very quickly, but we need a lot of solar panels to feed humanity’s current and future energy consumption. Not to mention, there’s a decent travel time. We’re gonna be launching these things at nearly 180 times the speed of sound, but… it’s space. Which means… it’s time for us to go,” He raised his hands to his wives.
“Go where?” Thomas asked.
“The streets, the hilltops, and perhaps the skies,” Setsuna answered, lightly teasing Izuku.
“Agh…” Izuku winced. “I did say that, didn't I?”
“Yep!”
“What about me and Star?” Thomas said before Izuku could die from cringing.
“Star’s doing her own press for America, trying to undo some of the damage. If you wanna stay and protect the President, that’s fine, but America could use its strongest.”
Thomas looked to the President, who threw his hands up. “Well your job was to protect America, I’m apparently no longer that important to America. They need you more than I do.”
“We will safeguard you,” The Japanese Prime Minister promised. “We will be your ‘shoulder’ for now,” He said, giving Izuku a purposeful look.
“Thank you, sir.” He grabbed hold of everyone’s Soul, and transported them across the world.